U2 - Elevation, Ecstasy, and a Higher Calling
Rolling Stone,
December 21, 2009
By: David Fricke
(from the December 24, 2009 / January 7, 2010 issue)
U2 ended the decade this way, according to their guitarist, the Edge: "As alive, as determined as we have been at any time in our history."
That is a remarkable statement for a band in its 30th year. But since 2000, the Edge, bassist Adam Clayton, drummer Larry Mullen Jr. and singer Bono have pursued experiment and ecstasy like no other group of any vintage, with a sustained passion and belief in the big-statement power of rock & roll. In the age of the single-song download, U2 released three of their best albums: 2000's vibrant return to basics, All That You Can't Leave Behind; the matured excitement and self-examination of 2004's How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb; and this year's summit of textural exploration and emotional release, No Line on the Horizon.
U2 have also raised the stakes and standards of live performance, playing some of the best shows of their career, including a historic, healing run at New York's Madison Square Garden, jut one month after 9/11. "When 'Where the Streets Have No Name' went off, and the lights went up, I think half the house was in tears," Bono recalled in Rolling Stone in 2005. "New York had let us into a very private moment. We did not feel in any way like visitors or tourists. We were the same people."
This year, in that spirit, U2 mounted their most ambitious and exultant tour, an in-the-round production that transformed the equation of mass and intimacy in a stadium-rock setting. It was the spiritually charged of tens of thousands of people wrapped around the band in a giant circle of reflection and joy, radiant with "the moment of surrender," as Bono sang in the encore every night. "That's the magic trick," Bono said during the tour -- "to make the audience the star of the show."
Bono's second celebrity as rock's busiest and most visible social activist, particularly on the issues of AIDS in Africa and Third World debt relief, has changed his band to some degree. He spends more days away from U2 rehearsals and studio sessions -- and on the phone, even when he's around -- than he did a decade ago. The upside for the Edge is more composing and searching time with his instrument. "For me," he says, "playing guitar is a deeply creative interaction, not a technical one. I don't practice scales or techniques. Whenever I pick up the guitar, my intention is to find some chord changes I have not explored before.
"When Bono comes back to listen, I'm in a position to inspire him," Edge continues. Bono, in turn, claims he "brings home an idea that we've always held close, which is that the world is more malleable than you think."
The Edge looks ahead, to U2's fourth decade, with the same passion and commitment with which the band started this one. "It matters to us that we still make music that connects," he says. "Rock & roll is about energy moving forward. It's a heart cry -- 'Here I am, listen to this.' A lot of artists get to the point where they think, 'I've said everything.' We're still learning. We genuinely feel like we haven't arrived yet."
© Rolling Stone, 2009.
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